Company

Smart Lock interest grew in 2017 as consumers holiday purchases turned into Saturday morning honey-dos. The big winners in Q1 were Schlage, August and Kwikset. The rest of the competitive landscape is littered with products that have been disappointing consumers persistently.

Schlage, August and Kwikset dominate Q1 2017 for Smart Lock consumers while other brands continue to disappoint.

Schlage is leaps and bounds ahead of their competition, not only seeing increases in both buzz and perceived UX, but also almost double the demand of their closest competitor. Wow. What is Schlage doing to consistently beat out their traditional competition like Kwikset and Yale as well as the newcomers like August and Aeon Labs?

Well, it’s not their app. Schlage is lacking on the App side of the Smart Lock experience. August does a better job of delighting consumers with their app interface and their integration with Comcast Xfinity Home. Schlage and Kwikset, traditional hardware (yes, they actually cut and cast metal to make their products) companies have been lacking in their app ecosystem for Smart Lock customers.

So why do consumers love Schlage locks but hate the apps? Why isn’t August dominating if their App is so much better? Turns out installation is important. When we dig into the details of how consumers talk about the installation experience a deeper story emerges…

Schlage is just simply easier to install. Schlage customers are frustrated (the red bar) half as much as their competition. They are almost twice as delighted by the installation experience as August. Simplicity sells, period. When we look at both August and Kwikset, we see frustrations with the initial router connection, software/app issues as well as issues around wiring and help from the company itself with installation. That means that both August and Kwikset could gain on Schlage by just improving their out of the box experience. That’s it!

Want more? Want to dig deeper to understand who is using these locks? What to see how August is performing across their products? You can get access to these tools yourself, using the Argus Analyzer. Learn more by clicking below.

If you are currently trusting the future of your enterprise to market intelligence gained from polls and surveys, the results of this election should terrify you. Not for the outcome but for the failure of polls to deliver their promised certainty of the outcome. The 2016 election will go down as the day that polls failed us, or at least failed to represent what was actually happening in the population. FiveThirtyEight and the wunderkind Nate Silver, for literally years the most trusted analyst in politics because of his big data approach to predicting outcomes, published this prediction ahead of the polls opening Tuesday:
FiveThirtyEight.org’s Prediction of The 2016 Election Outcome as polls opened on Tuesday based on analysis of polls. Remember this is a likelihood measurement, not a guaranteed prediction.
The final electoral map from the New York Times showing where key states flipped in directions options of what the polls were indicating. Much of the momentum behind the polling activity missed the actual votes completely.

Now in Nate’s defense, this wasn’t a zero chance of Trump’s win. 538 did suggest that Trump had a 28.6% chance of getting at least the necessary 270 electoral votes to clinch the presidency. But what the polls were telling us along with this analysis is that it was unlikely that Trump would win. As it turned out, the polls were not an accurate reflection of the population. Polls have become the buggy whips of Market Intelligence, useful during their time but if you’ve ever tried to whip your Prius to make it go faster, that’s equivalent to using a survey to instrument your market. While this has been spoken of in dark (and light) corners for years, this was a complete breakdown of our ability to instrument populations with any appreciable accuracy. And since many survey companies stake their ability to represent populations based on their success in predicting election outcomes, we have a problem.

We have spent decades trusting our politics, our products, our marketing, our movies, our futures to the results of surveys and polls. Companies and political action committees alike spend billions every year on constant surveys of their target populations of customers/voters. Tuesday’s outcome indicated what a colossal waste of time and money that is. That these methods no longer reflect, with any useful accuracy, what is actually happening in the market place. With all the talk of voter fraud, we should spend more time looking at the fraud perpetuated by polls and surveys. These methods lead to a blindness on the part of the organizations that commission them. Nokia was blinded by their own surveys to the threat of Apple and the iPhone. Axe Body Spray was blind to the misogyny their ad campaigns rained down on half the population when they tried to launch their first odor (scent) for women. And now we have evidence that polls contributed to the blindness the media and the Clinton campaign had to the real strength of Trump’s support.

From the beginning Argus Insights has focused on building metrics based on “Should” rather than “Could.” Heavily influenced by my time at IDEO and Stanford’s d.school, we have always centered on observation over stimulation, listening over asking, because, like Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle (not meth recipe), the very act of taking a poll changes the validity of the answers given to a pollster. We do not prove our performance by showing our ability to predict elections, but showing how our metrics align with consumer acceptance. Companies need to open their eyes to their actual consumers, across the entire market, not just those willing to reflect your opinion foisted on them through constant surveys. Polls have proven to be a waste of resources, both time and money. Now we risk our future if we continue to rely on these inaccurate methods of instrumenting populations. Instrumenting the actions consumers take across the entire market is the key to avoiding brand blindness and it is something we have spent the last seven years perfecting here at Argus Insights. How else have we been able to beat Wall Street analyst estimates of iPhone sales almost every quarter for the last five years? We listen and observe, we don’t poke and frustrate. And as a result, we have a pretty accurate crystal ball.

If you want to join the post poll movement or just ask questions about how we whip up our secret sauce, let me know. Our goal from the beginning has been to put into the hands of decision makers the best evidence for driving innovation and growth. With our new Argus Analyzer toolset, we’ve made taking that first step even easier.

Mobile World Congress 2015 Report

Find Out Which Brands and Products were the Biggest Winners in Barcelona

Argus Insights has been monitoring social conversations at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Before MWC, we hosted a webinar highlighting the brands and products that drove the most mindshare heading into the showcase, for which the slides and presentation are now available to download. Simply fill out the form and we’ll send that your way immediately.

Now that the event has passed, find out which brands, products, and tech trends were sparking interest during MWC. Argus Insights would also like to offer a free Post MWC 2015 Report (usually valued at $3,000) as a gift. The stories that we are finding are just too good that we believe everyone can benefit from the data. The world is talking and we’re listening, take advantage of our comprehensive analysis:

Discover what topics are most important to consumers

Examine market trends and consumer preferences

Gain actionable insight

If you want to stay up to date with trending social content, sign up for our weekly newsletters in the Smartphone, Wearable, Home Automation, and SDN/NFV markets. Leverage Argus data to gain an upper hand in the marketplace.

Argus Insights is proud to share our latest findings in the Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) markets. If you would like a copy of the webinar and presentation, please let us know by signing up below:

Furthermore, if you are curious as to where you stand today, and would like to know more about the happenings within the SDN/NFV market, we would like to offer you a free consultation to help you make the most of our insights.

Relative mindshare reflects the expected revenue growth over the next 2-3 years

Argus Insights can tell you if you are positioned correctly to capitalize on the rapidly growing Software-Defined Network and Network Functions Virtualization (SDN / NFV) markets by leveraging clear insights about your customers, competitors, channels, and impact of events.

Our results beat any of our competitors in accuracy, speed, and relevance due to our continuously curated, highly tuned proprietary SDN/NFV model. Discover the breadth of product launches, how you compare to your competitors, the influence of your presence at events, and much more with our near real time monitoring of SDN/NFV conversation.

We collect data and provide personalized insights in numerous B2B and B2C markets. If you have any other questions or concerns, it doesn’t have to be SDN/NFV related, feel free to contact us.

Conversation about the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Network (SDN) markets is rich and increasingly robust. At Argus Insights, we track what people are interested in, so we can pass this knowledge on and influence better business decisions. We will share insights weekly though our newsletter.

This week, we looked to the most popular links shared on Social Media (including Twitter, Facebook, boards, and blogs). Conversation is focused largely on what needs to change in order to ensure immediate success with the promise of continued scalability.

Are you interested in knowing who the current winners and losers are in the battle for mindshare in the SDN/NFV market? We’re hosting a free 30 minute webinar to answer that question on January 27 at 10am PST. It will be hosted by founder and CEO of Argus Insights, Dr. John Feland. He will provide concrete insights that will aid you in planning your 2015 strategy and investments, and influence your preparation for the Mobile World Conference 2015 (March 2, Barcelona, Spain).

5 critical changes to IT infrastructure usage you should be aware of in 2015
Shared 97 times:
2014 was filled with developments in IT infrastructure. This article predicts that while “hybrid cloud, increasing levels of flash storage and the emergence of OpenStack” dominated industry conversation, these will be overtaken by topics like automation, configuration management tools, lower pricing and cloud consolidation.

SDN & NFV in Mobile Networks
Shared 85 times:
This article discussed the economic and operational benefits SDN and NFV provide. By presenting the opportunity to “transition from appliance-based, proprietary hardware implementations to software-based, open platforms,” companies can reduce improve elasticity and simplify management by improving time to market cycles. These benefits are only possible, however, if virtual functions are “capable of adapting and scaling,” and so must be integrated into the Mobile backhaul network with integrated intelligence.

Opensource.com
Shared 75 times:
People shared the general website of open source, which invites the user to “discover an open source world.” With featured articles like “5 favorite Raspberry and Ardunio projects,” “A cloud management tool for simple deployments,” and “5 new guides for using OpenStack,” this page is a filled with information about how publicly accessible software encourages collaborative participation and transparency.

OpenShift PaaS Technology To Get Integrated With Docker Containers, Kubernetes Orchestration
Shared 66 times:
Red Hat’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology is evolving yet again, as they collaborate with Docker, “an open source technology which uses containers for application virtualization,” and Kubernetes, which is “a project by Google for container orchestration,” to rollout OpenShift 3. This is another step toward allowing customers to deploy hybrid cloud services in both a “physical-virtual environment,” and on “public-private clouds.”

What Customers Want in 2015: Cloud Foundry, OpenStack, Docker and AWS
Shared 57 times:
To achieve a solid foundation, at the request of customers, cloud technology must “be supported by a robust ecosystem,” while also remaining flexible enough to integrate emerging technology. In order for this to happen, this article relays that customers want four things: a PaaS that is based on Cloud Foundry since it is backed by “tech industry giants” and already has a large ecosystem, to be able to move to OpenStack, use Docker Containers, and work in a hybrid cloud environment. These request revolve around flexibility and anticipate the inevitable changes in technology and software.